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Abandoning the Great Commission

by Christopher A. Ferrara
January 7, 2015

Nearly 2,000 years ago Our Lord launched the Church on her saving mission with these words, known as the Great Commission:

Going therefore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you… (Matthew 28:18-20)

The Great Commission was accompanied by this divine warning: “He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved: but he that believeth not shall be condemned (Mark 16:15-16).”

One would have to be in a coma not to see that today; following the Second Vatican Council, the Great Commission and its attendant divine warning have been abruptly replaced by something like this:

Go ye into the whole world and dialogue with all nations, learning to appreciate the values in all religions. He that believeth not shall be respected.

Just after receiving the Great Commission, the first Pope said this to a crowd of his fellow Jews, 3,000 of whom converted on the spot:

Therefore let all the house of Israel know most certainly, that God hath made both Lord and Christ, this same Jesus… Do penance, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of your sins: and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost… (Acts 2:38)

Today, Peter’s forthright declaration that the Jewish people need faith and baptism for salvation, no less than any other race of men, has suddenly been replaced by something like this:

Therefore let all the House of Israel know most certainly that you need not do penance and be baptized for the remission of your sins, for you will receive the Holy Ghost under the Old Covenant, which has never been revoked.

What happened? What happened was that the Council introduced into the Church three utter novelties that have absolutely no basis in Tradition and were completely unheard of in the Church before 1962: “dialogue,” “ecumenical dialogue,” and “interreligious dialogue.” The outcome of the circulation of these novelties — like viruses in the Body of Christ — has been the paralysis of her missionary activity and the de facto abandonment of the Great Commission.

What we see now prevailing in the human element of the Church is precisely what was identified by Pius XI in Mortalium animos, which in 1928 condemned the nascent “ecumenical movement” because it promoted the “false opinion which considers all religions to be more or less good and praiseworthy, since they all in different ways manifest and signify that sense which is inborn in us all, and by which we are led to God and to the obedient acknowledgment of His rule.”

Nowhere is this catastrophic development more apparent than in this appalling video presenting Pope Francis’ prayer intention for the month of January, wherein Buddhism, Judaism, Islam and Catholicism are placed on an equal footing and Francis declares that among the world’s religions “there is only one certainty we have for all: we are all children of God.” This indifferentist proclamation is followed by this telling image:

When the Vicar of Christ declares to the world that “there is only one certainty” for all religions, merely that we are all God’s children, he has effectively abandoned divine revelation, reducing Christ’s divinity and the necessity of adherence to His Gospel and membership in His Church to one of many religious opinions among the races of men.

That is exactly the consequence Pius XI warned would follow should churchmen, for the sake of “ecumenism,” countenance the error that all religions are “more or less good and praiseworthy.” Wrote Pius:

Not only are those who hold this opinion in error and deceived, but also in distorting the idea of true religion they reject it, and little by little, turn aside to naturalism and atheism, as it is called; from which it clearly followsthat one who supports those who hold these theories and attempt to realize them, is altogether abandoning the divinely revealed religion.

Clearly we are in the midst of the apostasy predicted in the integral Third Secret — an apostasy that, as Cardinal Ciappi warned, “begins at the top.”